1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of microprocessors, and more specifically, to chipset architecture.
2. Description of Related Art
Security in microprocessor systems has become increasingly important. Virus, malware, spyware, and other malicious attacks are causing significant damages to enterprise, commercial, and personal computing at an alarm rate. At the same time, development of advanced features for microprocessors, chipsets, and associated hardware and software components has accelerated to satisfy the ever-increasing demands for high performance computing platforms.
One important component in a typical microprocessor system is the input/output (I/O) controller (IOC) chipset. The IOC provides many functionalities to interface to a variety of I/O devices, interconnects, firmware components, and processing units. To provide compatibility with existing computing platforms, the IOC incorporates advanced features in a generic mechanism to solve many issues. When this generic mechanism is compromised by a security breach, the overall system may become vulnerable to malicious attacks.